


Lines of Code

by smiley_anon



Category: Tron (1982), Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Evolution, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 07:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smiley_anon/pseuds/smiley_anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of Tronverse-based drabbles, most of which were previously posted elsewhere. Some are AU, prompts included with the drabble where applicable. Generally around a hundred words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Keystone

When a program first compiled, a lot was slow. Hazy. It took time to adapt to the system, feel your place in it and beyond it—to break past rote function and the simplicity of prewritten tasks to _self_ , identity, choice. For some programs, it was a matter of millis—others would take a full cycle, or more, to fully self-define. Ram always joked that his sense of humor rezzed in before he did.

Tron had been running for just over three hundred millicycles. Not everything felt sure, not everything was certain—but he knew one thing.

He _hated_ Sark.


	2. Waiting Game

Her disk rebounded off the walls, scoring a bright line across the blackness before slamming back to her grip in a blue-white arc.

Quorra stared blankly at the walls of her training room, hissed a burst of furious static as her processing flared with fury, grief, loss.

They were _all_ gone.

She threw her disk again, replacing the target in her sights with Clu, Rinzler, the Black Guard— _any_ of her people's murderers. _Or those who stood by while it happened._ She'd been to the city, seen the fireworks, celebratory Games—slaughter to celebrate slaughter.

She'd stood by then, too.


	3. Turnaround

The world upended, dashing Sam's fragile hopes as quickly as it flipped his insides.

He slammed against the ceiling— _floor?_ —let out a groan of pain as he scrambled to stand. The program was already launching towards him—he crashed his disk down, watched with a sinking heart as his opponent tucked, turned, and landed astride the gap.

_I'm not going to win this._

He'd felt confident enough, going in. It was like Dad's stories—the exciting ones, of combat and escape. Adventure. Seriously, if his dad could do this, Sam _knew_ he could manage.

He hadn't counted on Rinzler.


	4. Look Forward

"Well, man? What do you think?"

Yori repressed a smile as Tron hesitated. Flynn's new system was a flat black expanse, empty of programs, with no structure beyond the bare essentials. It wasn't entirely uninteresting—she itched to explore that new Portal interface, for one—but the downsides were beautifully clear in her counterpart's expression as he stared uncertainly around.

He glanced to her, and she returned the look, mouth curving up. _Sorry, program. He asked you._ Users, Flynn—there was a _reason_ most systems were finished before programs rezzed in.

Tron smiled back, turned to Flynn. "It's something new."


	5. Shards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For winzler's prompt: my take on what happened to Yori. Apologies to all for lack of clarity; I was trying to keep it to a hundred words, and... a lot got cut.

_ERROR._

Reboot crackled painfully, malfunction jarring. _Failure._ His disk seared his back—incapacitating, systems jolting raggedly online.

_What…?_

Bright agony answered his access attempts, and Rinzler felt his spine curl, fists tight against ground—he was on the ground ( _where, not why, not_ permitted _a why_ ).

Aural sensors activated; noise surged. Stuttering, edged, _broken_.

(Was he always broken?)

Vision returned.

Shattered blue code surrounded him.

_NO._

The thought was wrong— _he_ was— _no_ … A face, name, something _missing_. She was gone, and he groped through the jagged void of memory, but there was nothing.

Always nothing.

"Rinzler?" Clu sounded wary.


	6. A Great Feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Cyberbutterfly's prompt on FF.net: something with Ram.

"An actuary? Really?"

Ram glowered, but ignored him. _For now._ His eyes stayed fixed on the opponent's disk, gripped in a large, heavy hand. Red lines traced up the program's arm, down his chest, outlined the derisive face. He thought he'd seen the pattern before, a couple cells down. _Before Sark's speech._

"You gonna calculate at me, bit-brain? Offer me investments?"

Okay, this guy was just embarrassing. Ram _specialized_ in getting on people's circuits.

"Nah." He ducked the throw, dove forward and let his own disk fly. "You're not worth it."

"Could help you plan for your future needs, though."


	7. Whole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Cyberbutterfly and Moore12's prompts on FF.net: "100 words on Tron's thoughts as he was slamming into Clu's lightjet", and "more Tronzler".

_I fight for the Users._

It was silent and aloud, a whisper screamed through corrupted noise, and he clung to it, grip desperate— _his_ , Clu wouldn't take it, not again.

Air shot past, color flaring outside the shell that caged him, but he couldn't feel, couldn't see, was ripping to pieces. Trying was agony. Succeeding _broke_ him, half-edged filters and restrictions shattering before jagged truth. But nothing shattered, nothing was gone, _everything_ was there, lines of command and lies and memory binding, splitting.

He would _destroy_ Clu.

He couldn't harm him.

_Fight for the Users._

Tron did what he could.


	8. Patterns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...100 words of out of context creepiness. For the record, this isn't part of any ongoing or canon, or... it just happened, okay. There's more, but dunno if it'll ever get written.

" _…don't._ "

It was a fragment and a whisper and he couldn't move, couldn't run—couldn't _think_ past the crackling static of command and refusal. He wasn't made for words. And Tron wouldn't beg.

Rinzler didn't know how. Hands clenched at his side as he jerked out of protocol, mask snapping up to meet the other's stare. The program shuddered once, twice, wracking bursts of failure crawling down his spine as he tried to straighten.

The user [ _Flynn_ ] just smiled sadly. A short exhale. A shake of his head. "I'm sorry, man. I really dropped the ball on this one."

"Disk."


	9. Champion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This and the next four are part of a series of plurk-meme drabblets. Meme: provide two characters and an AU, receive a three-sentence ficlet. Only. >.> I fail a bit at sentence limits. Here ends the 100-word restriction, though?
> 
> Anyways, prompt: Tron and Quorra, Tron never got rectified, but Clu still took over. For crystalshard.

She was low on power and limping from a bright-edged fracture that ran from knee to hip when they caught up to her—three of the Black Guard, the strongest enforcers Clu’s new ‘perfection’ had to offer. Disk in one hand, baton in the other, she ducked one red-orange disk, parried another, and flinched away from the next blow before a hand interposed to grab the weapon mid-strike.

Quorra stared as the disk wrenched free of its wielder and sliced in tandem to a second blue-white arc, dispatching the opponents in less than a micro; her expression twisted with shock and pain and something that edged between gratitude and accusation as her rescuer’s black helmet derezzed, circuits relighting to mark identity with more than a scarred and damaged face.

“You promised to protect us all.”

A tired grimace in response, short words unsteady from repair or disuse as Tron answered, “I failed.”


	10. Invisible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Rinzler and Alan; Alan went instead of Sam. For drunk_scraplet on DW.

The user was presence and signature and source ( _source_ ) and Rinzler could map every trace of his passage through system and space, every twitch of skepticism and wary disbelief as he glanced at the walls, out the window, towards the unbending lock of Clu’s shape ahead. There was a war going on, his own quiet ticking the invisible backdrop, as the shapes flared on scans he hadn’t performed: bright white against yellow, power facing power in this narrow space, cold and distrusting and impossibly close, impossibly warm—he couldn’t be here, _he_ couldn’t _exist_. 

Attention stayed forward ( _don’t meet Clu’s gaze_ ), expression flat (that face was _wrong_ , not permitted), but no, it had to stay there, the user couldn’t look back, the user couldn’t _see_ him.

( _Don’t look at me._ )


	11. Backup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Few-sentence AU plurkmeme prompt #3: "Gibson and Rinzler, partners in crime." For MmeJack.

Security had a better response time in this sector than he’d given them credit for—or at least the monitor on the high-clearance archives did. Gibson was through his usual litany of excuses and halfway into a whole new streak (ISOs could improvise _just_ fine, thank you) when he heard the low rumble from above the lift he was being hauled onto.

One distraction, one drop, and one roughly handled disk dock later, and it was a much more familiar helmet staring him down in silent threat.

“Yeah, yeah, I’d miss me too. Come on.”


	12. Match

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For infiniteviking's prompt: "Rinzler and Vint: they've done this dance before." Worth noting, this applies the premise of [loop while answer](http://infiniteviking.dreamwidth.org/296360.html#cutid1), which if you haven't read, you should.

It was a pattern now, enough that Vint could map the opening nano-by-nano—turn, reach, a slide to low readiness as burning weapons split to two blades of bright-edged derezz. 

He knew the disks too well, not in content, but in edge and slice and red-orange arcs that locked him in, the same motions again and again, the same dance of perfection and punishment and Games for the hungry swarms outside the cage that called for screams and breaks and a prewritten ending. He tried not to give it to them, but he was tired—he always was when he made it this far—and it was the same low sweep that dropped him as he turned out from the blow, the same steady growl and tilt of the dark mask as he stared up, desperate and disarmed and grimly knowing.

As the disks crashed down through core to dock, Vint wondered, just for a moment, what Rinzler made of all this.


End file.
